That Dragon, Cancer warms hearts at Denver Comic Con

Ryan Green of Loveland is turning the tragedy of his son’s death into a tribute in the form of a unique video game titled That Dragon, Cancer. Although players won’t be saving princesses after battling the fire-breathing creatures traditional to fantasy, this journey isn’t any less fulfilling.

That Dragon, Cancer is Green’s way of memorializing his 5-year-old son, Joel, who passed away in March after battling a series of Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumors or AT/RTs . He was diagnosed when he was 1. That Dragon, Cancer chronicles the questions, thoughts and feelings of Green’s family of six as Joel goes through nine rounds of radiation therapy and battles at least seven tumors.

The game is being developed by a team of five people and is scheduled for release for the Ouya system later this year. Green and his team presented a demo of That Dragon, Cancer at this year’s Denver Comic Con.

An image from That Dragon, Cancer (Provided By ThatDragonCancer.com)

The demo featured a simple first-person framework in which players utilize the control stick and a single button. While That Dragon, Cancer is a far cry from the Triple A titles of gaming in terms of visuals and play, the response to it has been overwhelming.

In 2013, former X-Play co-host and former editor-in-chief of Rev3Games, Adam Sessler picked That Dragon, Cancer as one of the best games at the Seattle-based video game event Pax Prime. Movie and video game website Big Sushi FM, gave the game a Golden Sushi of Sophistication Award at the same show.

But perhaps the most poignant moment from Pax Prime were the reactions from gamers who were in tears after playing the demo.

“What was amazing to me is that time after time, people were openly weeping and they would come and they would hug me and we would talk about personal things and personal experiences, you know,” Green said. “What I hope happens is that people play it together and then they talk about these things because it unlocks things. Once you tell your story, people want to tell their story. Everybody has loss, everybody has pain and everybody has that thing that like transforms them, who they are.”

Part of what pulls players in is the game’s dedication to intense dialogue. Written by Green’s wife, Amy, the script is on point. Players can hear the emotion in the inflections of the characters’ voices with every quote as they convey uncertainty, happiness, hope, fear, doubt, resentment and more.

“I hate this room, I didn’t used to,” Green says in a scene set in his son’s hospital room. “For a moment it was an adventure. I was cast as the compassionate and caring father, holed up with his fragile son in a small cleft in the rocks. The storm raging, waves ripping at the sharp black rocks below. And enveloped in my arms he feels safe and I’m hold him firmly, trying not to slip. Because if you hold tight enough nothing will take him. Right?”

In-game: Green with his son hooked up to an IV (Provided By ThatDragonCancer.com)

In this melancholy moment, Green reflects on the mundane trappings of the hospital room, contrasting and intertwining them with the gravity of his son’s illness. The only interjection of happiness comes when Joel lets out a chuckle while his father bounces him.

Green looks forward to to including those happy moments in the final game. Joel loved dogs and so one scene will depict Joel and a puppy in a room together and players will have the opportunity to pet the dog and play fetch.

That level of interactivity allows Green to encode and retell his son’s life in a way that truly preserves his story.

“I think one of the neatest things is just being able to like take his voice and his mannerisms and his body language and encode that into the game so that other players can experience what it was like to be with Joel,” Green said.

He believes that videogames have a unique ability to allow others to experience and interact with a story and live within that story, in a way that other mediums can’t. The result is that it allows Green to remember Joel in a way that is meaningful to him and to others.

“It’s easy when you’re going through life to look at a tragedy and say, ‘Oh that’s sad,’ and move on,” he said. “What I appreciate about it is that people are willing to look and not look away. That they’re willing to engage with us and I’m able to tell them what he (Joel) was like and why he was important and why, even if he didn’t change the world, he changed my world.”

Joe Nguyen is the online prep sports editor for The Denver Post. He had prior worked with the Post's YourHub section, covering Adams County and Aurora. His obsessions have ranged from comics books and...

A nerd who is intrigued by all things extraordinary and otherworldly. When he’s not working, he can be found in a small room, playing D&D, pretending to be a three-foot gnome who charges dragons while mounted on a fox.